Page 40 of Tell Me You Love Me

“It’s like you never matured beyond fourth grade.” I toss the last of our things in the back and come around to the passenger door, then climbing in and crushing Eliza in the middle, I fix my seatbelt and flick her nose when she’d rather make faces than move out of the way. “You’re still not forgiven after your shit at the gym.”

“The ground andpound.” Cackling, she settles back in denim shorts and a tiny bikini top, her washboard stomach already slick with sweat. “You act like we haven’t been doing that for years.”

“You made it look sexual!”

“I roll with my own brother.” She folds her legs criss-cross styleso her knee encroaches on my space. “It’s not sexual when I roll with him. It’s not sexual when I roll with Chris.” She stops and smirks. “If you were thinking sexual things, all because your girlfriend was giving you the beady eye, then that’s on you.”

“You knew damn well what you were doing.” I shove her knee off and drop my head back, closing my eyes as we bounce across a poorly kept driveway and onto the tar road. “You were just a kid back then, so you never truly understood the intricacies of what happened. Now you’re grown, and you think it’s on you to protect my heart.”

“Someone’s gotta do it. You seem all too happy to let her stomp you into the curb. Every time she does, I bet you even thank her and ask for more.”

“Nobody curb stomped anyone.” I massage my temples with my fingers. “You’re making a whole big thing out of something you don’t understand. It was bad.” I drop my hands. “But it’s not what you’ve made it out to be. So you can stop with your bravado bullshit and calm the hell down.”

“Eh.” She plasters her hand to the side of my face and shoves until I hit the window. Not hard. Just… annoying. “Youwantto hate her, Thomas. But you never stopped loving her. Which means you’re not capable of making sensible choices around her.”

“Never stopped loving her?” I scoff.Yep, make the sound. Spit, even. Pretend she’s wrong!“You don’t know what you’re talking about. And that, right there, is the issue. You don’t know.” I slap her arm away. “Which means you’re acting like an idiot and relying on false information.”

“Not false.” She studies her nails, faux casual, though I see the smirk she tries to hide. “Ollie has said his piece over the years, and he was there when it all went down. He has firsthand knowledge. And Raquel brings it up every single time she calls home.”

“Your sister?” I laugh.Ha. Ha. Act fucking casual!“She left town the second she graduated high school. Her recollection doesn’t count. And if you say Betty told Barbara, and Barbara told Glen, and Glen told Bitsy, I’m gonna drown you just as soon as we get in the water.”

“You wouldn’t drown me.” She tilts her head back and searches my eyes. “All I’m saying is I didn’t need to be there ten years ago because I’m here now. I’vebeenhere, inside that gym, training with you for years.Thatguy, my friend? He’s not the same as the guy sitting next to me right now.”

“Eliza—”

“Thisguy is hurting, and even if you’ve been hurting for the last decade,you could set it aside. You could run a gym and train and socialize and go out for a drink and be around us, and most of the time, you smiled.”

“I’m smiling!”Am I? Really?I stretch my lips and paste on the fakest shit I can manage. “I’m okay, Lize. But you know whatisn’tokay? Pulling that shit you did the other day and making my life more complicated.”

“More complicated, how?” She uses Chris’s arm as a leaning post, which makes his gear shifts all the more difficult. But he doesn’t push her off. “You’re not with her, Tommy. You’re a single man, and she’s hitched to someone else. So explain to me how my behavior inside your gym—sexual or otherwise—complicates your life?”

“Rub yourself on him in front of Oliver,” Chris volunteers. “See what happens.”

She angles her head back and looks up at him with a beaming smile. “That would not be smart.”

“It’s all complicated.” I drag my fingers through my hair and catch sight of the lake just a little further up the road. “Mine and Alana’s history is complicated, but I kinda want to get to a point where we can talk for a minute without either of us screaming at each other. Just one time,” I groan. “Because maybe then she’ll answer my fucking questions.”

“You need to consider a world where she does exactly that.” Eliza wraps her arms around mine and rests her cheek on the ball of my shoulder. “Because maybe she tells you, and maybe the answers are just… not that great. Or not that helpful. Or maybe they break your heart again, or maybe they’re as simple as ‘I got bored and wanted to leave, and I didn’t love you enough to think you deserved a goodbye’.”

It’s the last one, I think, that would hurt the most. Leaving because she was mad is one thing. Leaving because she was terrified of the intensity of our love is another. But to think I held all of her in my heart, that I would have set the whole fucking world on fire if she’d asked, only to find out she didn’t care about me at all… that’s the one that’ll put me on the floor again.

“It’s been a long time,” Eliza continues, exhaling a sad sigh. “And opening all this up again might only make things worse. They say clean breaks are the best kind. They’re the ones that heal most efficiently.”

Alana gave me the cleanest of all breaks, really. She was here, and then she was gone.

“She doesn’t exist anymore, Tommy. She made that choice, and now, it might be healthiest for you to respect and accept it.”

“Ah fuck.” Chris’ foreboding tone brings me forward in my seat to stare at the side of his face. But then I follow his gaze straight ahead andunderstand, now, why it feels like we’re twelve again, and Dad is making a game of belting us with a shovel. “There will be no healing today,” he sighs. “Dammit.”

“Turn around.” Eliza’s eyes spring wide, taking in the scene ahead of us. Because Alana bends in the shade, red in the face while she blows up a floating tube. “Chris!” She slaps his arm and makes a grab for the steering wheel. “Turn around. We’ll swim somewhere else.”

“She already saw us.” It’s like a kick to the guts when Alana glances up at the sound of our approach, curious at first, then panicked when her eyes lock on to mine. Her chest caves in, her lungs expelling whatever air she has left, and despite the effort she put into blowing the tube up for her patiently waiting kid, it’s all for naught when she lowers her arms and the inflatable slowly deflates.

“She looks good.” Chris is just… Chris. Fuck him for his infuriatingly consistent honesty.

Because she does. She looks amazing in a short denim skirt, the front button and zipper already undone, and a blue and white striped bikini playing off her perfect olive complexion. Her hips have grown a little wider since I last saw her so dressed down, and her breasts have gone up a cup size or two.

She used to be flat all over. Now she has curves where curves should be and dips where dips are most delicious. Her stomach isn’t like Eliza’s. Not the washboard perfection I see daily in the gym. Instead, she’s a little softer. The lines on her belly, created by folds in her skin when she bends or sits.

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